


Bucky Bunny Berry Jam

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dating, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 07:29:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19204735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky and Wanda have a date, pick some apples, and discuss bugs...





	Bucky Bunny Berry Jam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowerofthewolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerofthewolf/gifts).



“No cheating,” Bucky said, handing her the basket. Wanda paused, hovering about four inches above ground, her red jacket rippling in the breeze behind her.

“How is this cheating? You wish me to pick the apples, I am picking the apples.”

“No one else can do that,” Bucky said. “Therefore, it’s cheating.”

“That is ridiculous,” Wanda said. “Would you want me to cover my eyes because not everyone can see? This is part of who I am, therefore, it is not cheating.” She shook her head. Bucky had very strict ideas about fairness.

“And if we were in any danger of starving to death, or even if we were doing a charity delivery of strawberry and apple jelly, then fine, sure, use your freaky red magic mist. But we’re not. We’re not in a hurry, we’re not competing with Captain America. We’re pickin’ strawberries an’ apples as a way to _spend time together_. So, what’s your hurry, kitten?”

“I am task oriented,” Wanda said, puffing her chest out a little, but she did let herself touch back down to the ground. “You said, fill the basket, I wish to get it done in the shortest time possible.”

“It’s a pick-your-own farm,” Bucky pointed out. “If I just wanted jelly, we could go to the grocery store.”

“I will pick apple with you, Bucky Barnes, because you asked me to,” she said. “And I do like spending time with you. But I am not going to climb up and down a ladder to get apples because you think it builds character. Or puts hair on my chest -- whatever your silly saying is.”

“How about you sit on my shoulders and pick apples and I’ll put them in the basket.”

“That is cheating,” Wanda said. “Not everyone can carry me around.”

“Fair,” Bucky said. “So that’s a no on sitting on my shoulders?”

“I didn’t say that,” Wanda said. “I just want to point out that cheating is cheating.”

“Get climbin’, nit-picker,” Bucky said, bending his knee just a little so she could climb him like a tree.

“Apple-picker,” she corrected, primly. She settled with one leg on either side of his neck, pulling herself straight on his shoulders. “So, go that way, I cannot reach anything from here.”

Bucky picked up the basket. “This’ll hold like half a bushel,” he said. “Maybe seventy apples, if we fill it well. Enough for several gallons of applesauce. Or jelly.”

“And what are we going to do with several gallons of jelly, even assuming I can cook them,” Wanda wondered. She reached into the trees and started picking apples, feeling the way the stem was loose or not, inspecting the skin before she plucked them, and watching out for the bees, who didn’t really seem to mind her interference, but she didn’t want to get stung anyway.

“We’ll eat some of it,” Bucky said, logically. “And probably make a mess. And we can jar some of it up and give it to our friends.”

“It’s the thought that counts?” Wanda said, putting her hand on his head to balance as she reached for a higher apple. “Because I don’t think it’s going to be very good jelly. I’ve never made jelly before.”

“My sisters used t’ make it all the time,” Bucky said. “There was a corner market down the street from where we lived, an’ the guy what run it used to let my sister take the fruit that was banged up. She made this mix jelly all the time, not apple, or blueberry or anything, but just whatever not-quite spoiled fruit we could get an’ stash in the coldbox. I sold scrap parts and traded it for sugar. It worked out.”

“Well, we can mix berries,” Wanda said. “This is pick-your-own. Apples, and blueberries.”

Bucky insisted on filling the apple basket anyway, and then Wanda had the fun of discovering that her boyfriend didn’t like worms. They were on their knees in the strawberry patches, filling up little green cardboard pint containers, when Bucky shrieked and threw something away from him in a riot of disgust.

“What?” Wanda’s powers came easily to her fingertips, and she was all but floating over the field when she spotted the poor thing. “It’s a worm.”

“Yeargh,” Bucky agreed. “Disgusting, all wriggly and stuff.”

Wanda plucked the worm out of the dirt, inspecting it with her powers. She could feel its dull, mindless contentment. There was warm soil and food, it had a good life. For a worm.

She floated it further away. “I never much liked flying bugs,” she said, commiserating. “We did not have central heating or cooling, so the windows were open quite a lot, and there were always these dull grey flies. Bzzzz, all the time.”

Bucky gave her a grateful look. “Tried go fishing once,” he said. “Stripers and stuff. It was Steve’s idea. Fishing, should be easy, right? Noooo. Ended up stealin’ some whitefish out of the market and trying to pass it along to our ma’s that we’d caught it. Steve’s mom was like ‘pulled the string so hard, Jimmy Barnes, that you peeled the scales clean off.’”

Wanda laughed. “I don’t think our parents even tried to pretend that we didn’t steal food.”

What a strange thing to bond over, going to bed hungry as an eight-year old. Wanda waved a hand over the berries, encouraging the bugs to go away, and while she was at it, sent a little thump down into the soil. No more worms need apply today.

By the time they filled the little wagon with a half bushel of apples, several pints of berries, and a few bundles of rhubarb, they were sweaty, filthy, and Wanda was ridiculously happy. They’d spent an entire afternoon doing nothing of importance at all, talked and laughed the entire afternoon through.

“You’re a little sunspeckled,” Bucky told her, pointing out some freckles on her arms.

“That happens,” she said. The farmer’s children were sitting around in a circle on the grass, clapping or playing a game, and Wanda meandered over that way while Bucky was paying for their fruit.

“Hey miss,” one of the kids said. “You wanna hold our bunny?”

Wanda found herself being coached into making a basket of her arms and holding -- no tiny little storytime rabbit, this, but a huge-footed, lop-eared monster rabbit that probably weighed a good twelve pounds at least.

“Rabbits have claws,” she observed. How had she not known that?

“I reckon you need a pet rabbit,” Bucky said, coming up behind her.

“No, no, no, no,” Wanda protested. “I don’t know the first thing about bunnies.”

“Aside from me,” Bucky pointed out.

“Well, if I have a Bucky-bunny,” Wanda said, “I don’t really need a rabbit, do I?”

“Perhaps not,” Bucky said. “Admittedly, that is the most disapproving bunny I’ve ever seen.”

“You should buy him for Steve,” Wanda said. “He is in need of something to disapprove of that does not wither under his stare.”

“Yeah, no, probably not,” Bucky said. “Although Captain ‘Merica with a damn big ass rabbit is an amusing image.”

“We will bring him up this way,” Wanda suggested, “and take his picture with the disapproving bunny.”

Bucky pulled out his phone and took several pictures of the rabbit anyway, curled in Wanda’s arms.

Several months later, Bucky Bunny Berry Jam, a limited edition, sold at the Maria Stark’s September Foundation auction of over three thousand dollars for a dozen jars.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Disapproving Bunny is a stuffed animal. I don’t know what to tell you, but that rabbit stares at people like they’ve disappointed him. (He is currently in residence with 27dragon’s sister-in-law who teaches music and Disapproving Bunny disapproves when her kids don’t practice. I’m told this is remarkably effective.)
> 
> ** further note: Wanda does not need a pet rabbit and I approve of her not wanting to try to take care of something without knowing what she's doing. Rabbits are A LOT of work.


End file.
